hi guysI am researching an article on free email servers that let you have an email signature with a picture, logo, or html in it. I have already checked out Gmail and it does not allow you to add graphics to email signatures. It won't even let you add rich text or html. If you are using any other free email server/clients like hotmail, yahoo, and so on, could you let me know if they allow pictures in the signatures in the emails.. I do not want to sign up for more email addresses as I have thousands already...Thanks guys.. any hints or tips will be much appreciated .. 🙂

With Thunderbird, it is very easy to add custom signatures, and you can put just about anything you want in them. There are some things to take note of though..Often other email clients, or 'free' web based email sites such as Hotmail and Yahoo, dont render the Thunderbird signatures correctly. In fact, if you want your emails to show up indentically as you have sent them from Thunderbird, then you pretty much have to go through a paid email service such as the one your ISP will provide you, AND the recipient needs to be using Thunderbird as well. This behaviour also applies to other email clients such as Incredimail. I am not sure regarding Outlook Express as I have never used it, but I am inclined to think the same thing would apply.Additionally, Thunderbird, Outlook Express, Incredimail etc do not work on the free email accounts. If you want to use an email client to access Hotmail and its derivatives, Yahoo, and probably GMail too (thought I am not sure on that one)then you have to pay them for the privilege by subscribing to an upgraded account.I have just tried to add an image to a signature on an old Yahoo email account of mine, and the option certainly exists to do it. However, I created a signature, including a small image, and sent a test email to one of my other email accounts, and only the text portion came through. There was no sign of any image ever having been there. I suspect that if I sent an email from this Yahoo account to another Yahoo account though, the signature would have worked properly.

Not all Free Email accounts, work harmoniously, between one another.Thunderbird has the ability, to send in ''Plain Text as well as HTML" at the same time.If another Free Email can't accept the images,that's hardly the fault of Thunderbird.I have HotMail, Yahoo,Gmail,Outlook Express and Thunderbird,so will experiment between them. 🙂

You need to distinguish between free email servers and email clients.An email client, such as Outlook Express or Thunderbird, is a program that lives in your computer, and checks your email inbox at specified periods. These can pick up your email from the server, and give you the option of leaving the original copy of your email on the server, or deleting it as it collects it and just storing the copy on your computer. An email server, such as Hotmail or Yahoo, is web based, not stored on your computer. This is the actual 'Post Office' if you like, and the email client is the 'Mailman'.

Thanks for explaining everything in detail,dak.You explain things clearly,that us Novices can understand.I like Thunderbird because of the ease of use.I like to Jazz an Email up,when sending to my friends.I think it makes an Email more special.It lets you add and Image with the text,so easy.And add text to the Image with another small program,so the image can be transformed like an E card Birthday Card or whatever.Have so much fun with Thunderbird,and still experimenting.Mitz asked the question "What free email servers can you add a picture email signature to?"and I recommend Thunderbird. 🙂

I agree, I use Thunderbird, have done so for years, and have no plans to change.Just one point though.. Thunderbird is not an email server.. its an email client.Mitz is asking about email servers, like Hotmail and Yahoo. Since you have accounts with all the major free email servers, I hope you'll experiment with what they can do, and how the emails appear once they arrive at a different destination.. ie Yahoo to GMail.. or Yahoo to Thunderbird (via your paid email server) etc.. and also how the emails sent from an email client such as Thunderbird (via your paid email server) appear on arrival at Yahoo etc..I'll look forward to seeing your results.

I did ask about email servers but now I realise I should have mentioned email clients as well… Because the actual article can be applied to any of the above…And thanks guys for the fantastic information..I must say it makes it easier for me to write my articles when you guys are using all the programs and email servers that I want to know about. I am very interested in what happens when you send a picture in a signature to another email client or server... I mean whats the point of putting a picture in an email if it doesn't show up...I think this is a fantastic thing for people to know.